I feel bad about abandoning this blog. But life has been weird. After the new car, many many things happened. The rainy season dragged on, my depression really surfaced (everybody has a mild SAD-tendency, don’t they?), a breakup happened, I nearly quit my studies, and I got working really really hard. It’s not like I didn’t have time to blog, or didn’t have anything to blog about, it’s just that things were undecipherable, and unwordable. Hopefully they will become wordable again soon.

It was about three weeks ago when my beloved informed me that I should keep Saturday the 9th of August open because there is s surprise for me. Because I am very bad with surprises (if I know that they are coming – possibly due to the fact that it’s a bit like a mystery to be solved) I kept racking his brain about where when what but he was very very good about it. The only two bits of information I managed to get out of him was that it wasn’t a women’s day related event (thank goodness) and that it didn’t really matter all that much what I wore – as long as it wasn’t too pajama-y (his words).

On Saturday morning, my beloved arrived at my flat at the said time and I was ready to get in his car and have him take me wherever he was taking me. But he came inside and told me that he didn’t want to be too early for this event. We made some tea, and my sister (who has a key) came into my flat with a packet of Orange Kit-kat (which our aunt had brought us from England) and told me that I had to help her carry some of her books into my flat because she wanted to store them there. I was rather annoyed – I was going to be late for my surprise!

When I reluctantly went outside, there was a brand-new silver VW Polo with a HUGE red bow around it waiting outside for me! My parents (who live 2000 km away) were also waiting outside for me! I was speechless and just giggled. I think I was more speechless about seeing my parents than the care – because I knew that I was getting a new one sometime soon (as my old car had literally started falling apart and my sister got a new car at this age).

So I spent the rest of the weekend in and around Cape Town and Stellenbosch with my parents, enjoying my power steering and radio/cd player… The question just is; what do I do with the bow? Wrap it around some trees?

Last Wednesday, I picked up a copy of the (free) varsity newspaper on my way to Chemometrics class. This newspaper is the kind of thing that I might have a quick look at during class and read a couple of day later when I really really am bored. My friend, sitting next to me in class, was, however extremely excited about me having this newspaper in class and proceeded to read it in detail. This week’s newspaper contained an extra section on books and writing, and in this section was included a list entitled “Top ten best Lyrics”. When my friend saw this list, she exclaimed to me, “Oh my word, have you ever heard about that band called Coldplay. This song of their, the Scientist, is really awesome.”

I mumbled something along the lines of “Yeah, I’ve heard of them…”

The thing is, I head about Coldplay in 2000, when I was fifteen Parachutes had come out, and Parachutes happened to be the first album that I purchased when I stated to like what I would term “real music”. And I was uncontainably excited about the release of A Rush of Blood to the Head, but was a little bit disappointed by the album, but loved The Scientist and hoped that the band would not release this song as a single. But they did. I remember the music video and the fact that the girl who died in it wore red converse sneakers (which i thought at the time was the coolest thing ever). After this song, Chris Martin became a rockstar, released the extremely disappointing X&Y, and lost most of my respect.

So yes, I have heard about The Scientist. And thinking about it makes me just a little bit sad.

(Update: This whole business reminds me a bit of this Vanity Fair ‘Stuff white people like’ article.)

During my penultimate year of high school, my best friend and I went on a “Winterschool for the arts” at the University of the Free State… In a town-city called Bloemfontein. This is irrelevant, but it was pretty cold and sortof depressing because it was cold yet dry, without any hills or mountains (I am after all a hill and mountain girl) which made the place ugly. Anyway, I attended classes on short story-writing, which was a little bit annoying due to my lack of clicking with the lecturer and my realization that I will probably never be a short story writer. However, I did learn valuable things, mainly about being an actual person, and a bit about descriptive writing.

One thing that I do remember is the following warning; when there is a story in your head, DON’T TELL IT TO ANYONE, because then you won’t be able to write it, because the story will essentially be out of your system. I experienced it again earlier this week, when I had already thought up a blog post surrounding an anecdote in Chemometrics class, but I told two friends about this anecdote. And I’ve found that every time I’ve sat down to write this specific post, I could not get myself to do it, which is a bit of a shame. But also kindof cool. Now I just want to write about things that happened this weekend, which I’m not really sure I should, perhaps you’ll get the story about Chemometics too…

So many posts before, have been written by myself (in a previous blog, unfortunately) about how I am suddenly don’t have time for anything, like sleep, seeing my beloved or write blog posts. I have been totally swamped by a multivariate statistics course (yet again learning about the Unscrambler) and suddenly needing to have frequent meetings with my main supervisor. The most beautiful part of all this is that I don’t have any transport since my car’s wind screen wipers broke completely and now I have to trek to campus on foot! This sucks! A lot!

I went for a run. A short run. On Wednesday afternoon, it the pleasant cold pre-dusk of a sunny winters day. I haven’t gone for a run since well, lets just call it forever (it was probably still the nineties, it was that long ago), so this was a REALLY BIG DEAL. It made my lungs hurt. A LOT. However, I managed to strike the balance so that the entire experience was so so entire horrifying that I would never want to go for a run ever again. Surprisingly too, my legs didn’t hurt afterwards, although I feared that they might.

On Thursday morning, whilst still feeling exuberantly proud of actually having gone for a run, Johnny B (a blogger which I frequently read) posted and entry on exactly the same thing – going for a run after forever, and fearing that it would hurt – which made me feel strangely connected with the world. It was almost like I was tapping into the collective subconscious of the blogosphere. This may or may not be what convinced me to go for another run Thursday. Bad idea.

Logic, as well as conventional wisdom had me convinced that if I stretched before and after my run, warmed up and cooled down well and ran exactly the same distance on Thursday as on Wednesday, my lungs will hurt again but my legs will not hurt (perhaps a little, but not significantly). Logic and conventional wisdom were both wrong. It hurt. It still hurts. After sleeping, more stretching and lavender-oil rubbing. And the question I ask is; WHY?

I woke up this morning and I felt GOOD! This was very unexpected, because I’d kinda gotten used to waking up in the morning and feeling bad, in that oh my word its cold outside and I really don’t want to get up way…I was also unexpected because I was expecting to be at least slightly hung over, which I wasn’t. It took me a while to realize that it was actually getting light outside as opposed to the normal winter daytime dusk that we’ve been experiencing lately. Then I finally got it. The sun is shining! Send out a news bulletin! Let a fanfare play! Joy to all the earth today!